Viking_Yearbook_71

Facilities Planning Director In the years since our last master plan in 1966, a number of things have changed. We've had substantially Jess growth in the sciences than was anticipated. We have had more interest in the social sciences, though we have no definite picture of what accommodations the social sciences will need to do their job years from now. Also, over the past four years, we've run an experiment in remote parking. The experiment has blossomed from first year patronage of about 100 students to the recent figure of about 1,300 people who are coming in on shuttle buses. This greatly diminishes the amount of parking space we need. For example, for the last four terms we've had 100 to 150 unsold parking spaces on campus. I'm sure this is the only institution in the state where that is true. The interim use of cleared ground as parking lots is extremely bad in terms of aesthetic appearance and livability. We don't need to tear down buildings now to create more surface parking. We do need to get rid of some of the older buildings now standing to create some green spaces in the campus area. We need these green Jiving places very badly. What we see out there in the Park Blocks now is a mass of mud ... We're in seven permanent buildings, including the parking structure. It is not adequate. We have insufficient space in Arts and Letters. We have totally inadequate space for the School of Education. Our library is short of what we need. Business Administration is without seminar and special project rooms. We have only 60 percent of the physical education space we need. We have used seven different architectural firms on the campus so far. And we'll probably have two more firms involved in new projects during the next two or three years. One of the instructions we will give them is to deliberately get away from what we now feel is confinement to the grid system .. . We have intended to do nothil)g that would look like we're shutting the city out. And yet, when you drive up Broadway, this is almost exactly the impression you get. It's a solid wall; there's very little to announce to anyone that he is passing through a major university. In fact, we're becoming a corridor through which one passes to get to the freeway. On the Broadway side of the school, it is really unfortunate that we could not have had a continuation of the city. A tie shop, a travel agency, a delicatessen-the whole gamut of things should logically have been built into the fabric of our buildings along Broadway and Sixth Avenue. For arbitrary and artificial reasons we could not do this. We now have the license to do it, but we're so far along in construction the license is almost foregone. What we have now really isn't all bad. The only two buildings on any campus in the state of Oregon that have won architectural awards are here at Portland State. The Physical Education Building won an honor award and so did the first unit of the parking structure. The thing that is going to be a particularly bright spot in this whole dull sky we have ahead of us is the major change in the Park Blocks this summer. The Park streets, the sidewalks, the hard lines around some of the existing buildings, will be demolished. The place will again become the domain of the pedestrian. Director of Campus Safety and Security Campus security is on a 24-hour basis, seven days a week. There are 21 people in the office, all security officers. In the past year we've recorded 1,100 law violations on campus. Most of them have been larceny or malicious mischief-property damage, trespass, drugs . One arrest we made was an actual observation. One of my officers saw this woman walk up and sit down next to another woman who was sleeping on a couch with her books and purse beside her. This woman sat there for awhile and when she left she left with the other woman's purse. It was just a simple petty larceny. We've had 11 auto thefts in the past 13 months... Hard drugs in the campus area are on the increase. Under legal definition, there has been one rape.at the university. The rest would be called sexual assaults. In the past week and a half there have been three complaints signed with the police department resulting in arrest. All three of the men . arrested were non-students with previous criminal sexual backgrounds. The way I look at Portland State, we are a full-fledged community. In these 12 blocks you have business, residents, transients, vacationers. You have upper-class, lower-class and others. You have everything that makes up a community. Many people are reluctant to accept this fact. They feel that it's a world of academia. And I disagree. There is no such world anymore, as far as it being the old sixteenth century abbey of educator and student. It's a metropolitan area. There isn't a single thing that this university has that isn't an equal problem in any other city or township. I think students see that security officers are a part of the community . Hopefully, we've developed our image as the mediator, one who is going to be a little more cognizant of what the attitudes and conditions on campus are. There has been an agreement with the administration that there will be enforcement of peace and order on campus rather than law enforcement. Our position during the strike last spring was still a frantic try at trying to maintain peace and order. This was feasible at times. Other times it was impossible. Naturally, we've been called pigs, but mainly by people who were not members of this community. Some students have called us that rhetorically. We are part of the administration. We are one of enforcement orientation. Reluctantly, we've taken on that role. But it has been one of a given role rather than an accepted role. The office has refused to become a cop shop on campus. 89